


how it feels (to be set free)

by ChaiFighter



Series: things they left [2]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: F/F, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jared Kleinman Not Being an Asshole, M/M, Suicide Notes, but by the end it should still feel like closure and a, but we'll get to the comfort, but y'all should feel for him anyway, he's a grieving kid, i lied jared is still an asshole, it's just a long and upsetting road to get there, it's mostly hurt, it's not a happy fic you guys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 01:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14683764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaiFighter/pseuds/ChaiFighter
Summary: Evan Hansen wrote eleven letters explaining why he killed himself. This is the aftermath.(or: Jared Kleinman's slow-motion breakdown and other sad stories.)





	1. Dear Green Valley High School

**Author's Note:**

> TO NEW READERS: This story will probably make enough sense on its own to be readable, but for the full emotional payoff you should definitely read part 1 of the series, 'wires got crossed,' which has the full text of all the letters. It'll also give you a lot of useful context for the timeline, which is very different from canon. 
> 
> Heads up, because this chapter is the Green Valley High chapter, it has a fair number of OCs to pad out the student body. They'll be gone as soon as this chapter is over and most of them won't appear again. Just in case y'all were worried.
> 
> Credit to the comments section on 'wires got crossed' for the encouragement to write the afterstory. I was prepared to let it stand alone, but here I am. Thank you all for your support!

When Evan Hansen died, there was no word for two days. No one knew where he was, and no one seemed to care, except Zoe Murphy, who spent those two days in a state of bitten lips and concerned text messages, and Jared Kleinman, who was in school the first day of Evan’s disappearance and gone the second. A few of his friends questioned his absence, but attendance said his mother had called him in sick, so they didn’t worry about it.

In fifth period on the second day, Zoe checked her phone beneath her desk during a lecture and froze, staring at it. She yanked it into full view and began typing, unheeding of the teacher’s request that she put it away. The typing grew gradually more frantic.

“Zoe, phone _away_.”

She didn’t react. Her shoulders pulled tighter and tighter. Her breathing turned erratic.

“No,” she choked. “No, no, no.”

She burst out into shuddering sobs. Her shaking fingers lost their grip on her phone and it clattered first onto the desk, then off it to the floor. She didn’t seem to notice.

And then she was out of the room, leaving all her belongings behind. The door swung shut behind her. The slam of its closing was louder than the students expected, and several sitting near it flinched.

By the end of the day, everyone knew about Zoe Murphy’s breakdown. None of them knew the reason why until the following morning.

–––

“It’s just awful,” said Rachel Barnes at lunch on the third day. She poked at her fruit cup. “You sure these are peaches?”

“Definitely peaches,” said Gracie Ellis, “just bad ones. Yeah, it’s pretty awful. I feel so bad for her. Two of them in four months. That’s crazy.”

Rachel gnawed on the edge of her tongue. “Did you know the kid? Hansen?”

“Vaguely. I think he’s been in a few of my classes. I never talked to him, though.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Rachel shoved away her tray. “I don’t trust the peaches.”

“No shit,” said Gracie. “It’s school lunch, and you’re not poor and desperate like me. Give it here. Do you think Zoe’s going to be back for the concert Monday? How long do you get out of school for a dead friend, anyway?”

“No clue,” Rachel said. “She’ll probably be back, though. You don’t have to actually feel better, you just have to be functional enough to show up. And it’s not like she lost another sibling.” She winced. “That sounded bad.”

“Damn,” Gracie muttered around a mouthful of peaches. “I wanted her solos.”

“You’re horrible.”

“I’m opportunistic. There’s a difference.”

–––

“How’d he do it?” Tyler McKinney asked Isobel Barriga and Owen Hoff over a hissing bunsen burner. He stuck a match into the gas feed, and they all jumped away as it lit more strongly than they had intended.

“Jesus,” said Isobel. “Be careful with that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Tyler. He put out the match. “Really, how’d he do it? Do you know? Did he jump off a bridge or something?”

“I don’t know,” said Owen quietly. He adjusted the flame on the burner and kept his eyes studiously on his hands. “I don’t think we should talk about it. It’s really sad.”

“Still, pretty fuckin’ surreal. We probably saw that kid in the halls and now–” Tyler mimed a long fall and a splat with his hands. “Isn’t that wild?”

“Ugh, stop,” said Isobel. “Grow up.”

“Never!” Tyler stuck out his tongue. Isobel grabbed his worksheet off the countertop and shoved it into his face, crushing it and dousing it in saliva in the process. Owen silently left the lab station to collect the rest of their materials. The subject of Evan Hansen did not come back up.

–––

“You okay, dude?”

Jared looked up from his desk, scoffed, then looked back down again. He didn’t say anything. Aidan sat down at the desk next to him, trying to make his posture seem open and nonthreatening. Mostly he just looked uncomfortable.

“I know you and Evan were friends, kind of.”

Jared’s throat bobbed. His hands folded in and out of each other, restless and tight. He still did not answer. He looked exhausted.

“Seriously, you look like hell–”

“Would you shut up?”

Aidan pressed his lips together. “Sorry.”

In the four years they’d known each other, Aidan had seen Jared let himself be sad roughly twice. Sadness was something Jared _allowed_ himself once in a while. It was a little terrifying on a good day, but he rarely slipped.

“Dude, I really–”

“Shut _up_ , Aidan. I really don’t need your empathy shit right now.”

Jared’s eyes were red. Crying was not something Jared did, ever.

“Okay,” said Aidan. He tried not to look miffed. He didn’t think he succeeded, but he also didn’t think Jared particularly cared about anyone’s feelings right now. “Just–I’m here. If you, uh. Want to talk.”

Jared laughed, raspy and sharp around the edges. He covered his face with one hand and dug the other into his own hair.

“Sure,” he said, still laughing. “Right.”

–––

There was no assembly. Connor Murphy had died in the summer, so no one had even considered the possibility of an assembly, but when Evan Hansen passed seemingly without fanfare, there were a few mutters of discontent.

“Seriously?” said Rachel. “They’re not even going to do some sort of memorial meeting?”

“Assemblies make it more likely that other kids off themselves.” Gracie glanced up from her phone. “So do plaques and gardens and shit. They might do a small meeting or something, though. A support group type thing.”

“That might be nice,” murmured Rachel. “We should go to that.” Gracie agreed. Neither of them really intended to do it.

“Support meeting,” read Isobel. The flyer was attractively colored and well-organized, with clearly heartfelt effort behind it. She handed it back to Alana, though not without remorse. “Sorry, but I didn’t really know him.”

“Oh.” Alana seemed to deflate. “Okay.” Unbeknownst to Isobel, this was the seventh such response Alana had received that day. “Thank you.”

Isobel offered a strained smile, then turned back to her food.

“I’ll take one,” said Owen. Alana smiled gratefully and passed him a flyer before sweeping off to the next table, where she would receive similar responses, an endless chain of didn’t-know-him’s.

“You really gonna go?” asked Isobel. Owen read the flyer carefully front to back, examining the soft blue color palette and trying to see past Alana Beck to the boy who had died.

“Maybe,” he said. And he meant it. But then the day rolled around and he had homework, and a sibling’s birthday to shop for, and a choir concert in two days. The flyer joined the abandoned piles of scrap in his room, destined someday for the recycling bin.

When the meeting finally happened, there were twelve people there. Two had known Evan. Four _thought_ they had known Evan. Two were there for Zoe. One was Alana. And the remaining three were freshmen who wanted the gory details of an upperclassman’s suicide. Jared yelled them out of the room, then declared the whole thing a farce and stormed out himself.

In the silence after, Zoe and Alana stared at each other, tired and lost. Zoe’s two friends, who had known Evan only as that weird kid who Zoe hung around sometimes, grew steadily more uncomfortable, suddenly certain that coming here was a mistake. The four who thought a stray conversation or a group project was enough to know a dead boy started up a teary conversation of “Oh, remember when,”s and “Evan would,”s.

Zoe walked out after ten minutes. Alana held the meeting through its scheduled duration, then decided she needed to rethink her plan of action.

Green Valley High School never received its letter. There was never a chance; even if Heidi Hansen had wanted to share it, the district would have done everything it could to keep the note away from the student body. But that was fine.

_I’m sorry for taking up your time…and for whatever inconvenience might result from my death._

The apology was unnecessary. Best to leave it unread.


	2. Dear Alana Beck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Which I Project Massively Onto Alana Beck
> 
> Based on this, I may need more than one chapter for each character to flesh out satisfying conclusions for all their arcs. So this may not be the only Alana chapter. And we may very well need more than 10. Hmmmmmmmm
> 
> Warning for Jared being a huge dick. He'll get his development later, promise. For now he's... pretty bad.

So the support meeting didn’t go very well. That was fine; Alana should have anticipated this. Of course it would be difficult, so soon after a death. Of course Evan’s two close friends left the meeting, they had just lost someone close to them. Of course most people couldn’t make it, she held it on a Tuesday. Everything happened on Tuesdays, obviously people would be busy. She should have planned for that.

School policy after suicides was to identify students who were likely to be grieving and encourage them to seek support services. Alana apparently fell into the category because Evan wrote her a letter. She recognized this as a sensible step on the part of the school board but found it personally unnecessary. Evan had been a distant acquaintance at best. Alana had no more reason than most of her classmates to grieve, just the normal sense of loss and instability that came with the premature end of a classmate’s life.

Evan hadn’t been eligible to vote yet when he died. She kept getting stuck on that, for some reason.

Anyway, she had to reevaluate. The support meeting had been a bust, but she would figure it out. After all, she was a go-getter. She was on top of things.

_You’re something I wish I could be, you know?_

She could fix this.

“Thank you for doing this,” Hannah Thompson had said tearfully as the meeting adjourned. “We’re all going to really miss Evan, and it means a lot to be able to mourn with everyone.”

“Of course,” said Alana with her warmest smile. “I’m glad I could help. It’s a difficult time for all of us.”

Once the room was empty, Alana did a quick check to make sure the desks were back in their proper places, then closed the classroom and jogged the length of the building to the gym, where she changed in record time and squeaked in just on time for volleyball practice. Two hours later she made her way just as quickly out to her car, drove home, ate a protein bar, and hunkered down for three hours to draft a full analysis paper for English Lit and knock out a few smaller worksheets from other classes.

“Dinner!”

Alana, still debating whether she could use the phrase “casual condescension,” again without seeming repetitious, heaved a sigh, then answered the summons.

“It’s nine o’clock,” Tami hissed gleefully as soon as Alana was up the stairs. “That’s a new record!”

“Don’t say anything to Mom,” Daniel warned. “She’ll make us wait even longer.”

“Right,” said Alana. “Tuesday.”

Tuesday was Dad’s cycling day, which meant Mom made dinner, which meant they didn’t eat until she got home from work, which was typically around seven or eight. Alana hadn’t noticed the late hour. She hadn’t even noticed she was hungry.

“Why’s it so late today?”

“She had to fight someone at work,” said Tami, grinning. “When she picked me up from gymnastics, she swore a _ton_.”

Alana winced. “Under her breath or loudly?”

“Under her breath. But I heard her anyway.”

Of course she did. Tami heard everything, whether it was middle school gossip five lockers down or Alana and Daniel whisper-fighting two rooms away. This ability, along with an uncanny knack for appearing distracted while really absorbing every word, made her dangerous to have for a sibling. Daniel had no such ability, thank god. Alana wasn’t sure what she’d do if there were two Tamis.

Dinner was a quiet, efficient business on Mom nights. They ate together in deference to Dad’s rules about family dinner, but it was typically done with minimal talking and a studied speed to the eating. Mom asked about their days, they gave detailed enough answers to satisfy her curiosity, and within twenty minutes everyone left the table, distracted again by whatever they’d put on hold for the meal.

Back in her room, Alana looked over her paper again, decided that it was fine to reuse the phrase, finished the paragraph, and closed out the document for the night. She checked the time. 9:30. She had an hour before she had to get to bed.

Time to make a plan.

The support meeting had been a bad idea. She recognized that now. It was too…vague. Too general. Its purpose was muddy. She wasn’t sure how the purpose of a meeting to respectfully remember a dead classmate could be muddy, but the fact remained that it was. Somehow.

Hannah Thompson had thanked her for holding the meeting. Clearly there was some benefit from it. Alana just needed to figure out how to spread it wider. How to reach more people. How could she unify the student body?

Without thinking, she found herself glancing toward her desk drawer.

_You’ll change the world someday._

She began to write.

–––

“Project Hansen,” read Zoe. Her face was unreadable.

“A student organization for suicide awareness and prevention,” said Alana with a sunny smile. “I was thinking we could run a fundraiser and donate the proceeds to a national campaign, or use them to subsidize student resources here.”

Zoe bit her lip. Her expression did not express much enthusiasm for the cause. “Alana, I don’t–”

“You don’t have to do anything. Not a lot, anyway. I can handle all of the organizational aspects. But it would be good to have someone there who knew him. You can make sure he’d approve of our mission statement. It is named after him, after all.”

“I can’t ‘make sure’ of anything about Evan,” said Zoe. “He’s dead.”

Alana faltered. “I–Well–”

“Just a school fundraiser?” asked Zoe, looking back down at her pamphlet.

“And some meetings. We have to have some sort of membership base.”

Zoe put the pamphlet down gently on the table. Her expression had cracked a little. Alana’s heart hurt for her. “Do you think this would have helped?”

Oh.

_I think if I could be like you…_

Alana suddenly felt very small.

“I can’t say I know,” she said. “I don't think we’ll ever know. All we can do is try to help others who are feeling the same way.”

“Okay,” said Zoe. “I’ll think about it.”

_… maybe I could handle the challenge of living a while longer._

“Thank you,” said Alana. “That’s all I ask.”

–––

“Project Hansen,” repeated Jared Kleinman. He said it as though the words tasted bad, and he glared at the flyer in her outstretched hand like it was a personal affront. When it was clear he didn’t intend to take it, Alana lowered her arm.

“A student organization for suicide awareness and prevention,” she said, undeterred, flashing him the same bright smile she’d given Zoe. “I was thinking–”

“Why are you asking me?” Jared interrupted with a sneer. He leaned back in his chair in a seemingly deliberate effort to come off as offensive as possible. “The hell do I have to do with this?”

“Well, since you and Evan were friends–”

“Family friends. There’s a _difference.”_ He said it with scathing irony, like an inside joke with some terrible meaning that only he knew. Alana bristled at the tone. It took everything she had to keep a neutral expression.

But still. He wasn’t meeting her eyes. His arms were crossed defensively across his chest, and he looked like he hadn’t slept at all in the week since Evan’s death. It wasn’t the grief or helplessness Alana had seen on Zoe’s face, but the same piece of her still ached for him, even as the rest rankled at his attitude.

“Alright,” she said. After a considering moment, she placed the flyer on the desk in front of him. “Please keep this, though. In case you change your mind.” He didn’t move to take the flyer, but he didn’t throw it back in her face either, so she forged ahead. “And if you could come to one of our meetings, I think Evan might have appreciated you being there.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Jared’s eyes shuttered completely, leaving his face cold and hard.

“Don’t talk to me about what Evan would have wanted,” he said, lower than before, flinty and dangerous. He didn’t make any motion toward her, but Alana found herself fighting the sudden urge to step back. “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop using my– a suicide victim as fodder for your fucking resume.”

She straightened, affronted. “I am _not–”_

“You’ll stop,” he repeated. “And then you’ll take your futsy little Microsoft Word trifold, obnoxious personality, and insufferable need for attention, get them far the fuck away from me, and never speak to me again. Got it?”

_If I could be like you…_

“Wow,” said Alana, trying to sound like her throat wasn’t closing up. “You really are an asshole.”

“Congratu-fucking-lations, you’ve stated the obvious.” Kleinman tipped a mocking salute and a tight, mean smile. “Have a nice day.”

She wrestled with the lump in her throat for several seconds, searching for words, until she finally said a quiet, "You too," and walked away.

_You’re something I wish I could be, you know?_

Awful. He was just _awful._

“You forgot your flyer,” Jared jeered after her. She faltered, just for a second, then continued walking. He could throw away his own damn flyer.

–––

_Go-getter._

Obnoxious personality.

_On top of things._

Insufferable need for attention.

_You’ll change the world someday._

The summer between sophomore and junior year, Alana had a nervous breakdown. With the new freedom of a driver’s license and seemingly unlimited time on her hands, she’d signed up for activity after job after internship after volunteer commitment, seizing first on everything that could possibly turn an admissions officer’s head, then on everything else that she held even a passing interest in trying, and before she knew it she’d overbooked herself so hard and so fast that she literally collapsed under the stress.

When the dust settled– when she was stable and her schedule was cleared and she was booked with a therapist–she spent a long time in extended self-examination. After much analysis and reflection (and some help from Dr. Lewis), she came to the conclusion that she was an essentially good person with a good heart and good intentions who happened to pin too much of her self-worth on external things. She defined a significant percentage of herself by what she did and what others thought of her, a source of identity that was subject to an unfortunate amount of fluctuation. This, mixed with a genuine love of Doing Things and a strong dose of commitment impulsivity, sometimes led her to extreme courses of action.

Now as a high school senior, Alana still had a tendency to overextend, but she knew herself well enough to read the signs and pull back before things got too bad. It was the other part–the other people’s opinions part–that she still hadn’t gotten a grip on.

Insufferable.

_Smart._

Obnoxious.

_Strong._

_If I could be like you…_

_You’ll change the world someday._

It didn’t make sense.

It shouldn’t affect her like this. Right? It shouldn’t. She didn’t know Evan, and he didn’t know her. He even said as much in his letter, “here’s a letter addressed to you, written to the idea of you.” He didn’t write to _her,_ he wrote to the archetype she represented.

She shouldn’t feel like this. She shouldn’t hear him echoing, filtering into the cracks of every conversation she had, every action she took.

She just wanted to _do_ something, was the thing. There was a restlessness in her throat these days. Sometimes it felt like words, but she didn’t let them stay long enough to think about them.

It was just–she needed to do something, something big. Something special.

_You’ll change the world someday._

Sitting cross-legged on her bed, pencil on her lip as she drafted the Project Hansen charter statement, she wondered if maybe the words in her throat were Evan’s, not her own.

_Stay strong, stay smart. You’ll change the world someday._

She’d read the letter over and over, again and again until she could recite it. She’d dissected it for word choice and connotation and syntax, she’d taken that damn letter and written a thesis paper in her head about Evan Hansen and his diction and vocabulary and the exact reasoning and effect behind every last syllable of her slice of his final document.

But she couldn’t find the rhyme. She couldn’t explain its reason, its purpose. She couldn’t explain her own sudden, aching need to be what he believed her to be, this unshakeable pillar of competence and drive.

_I think if I could be like you…_

Obnoxious.

Insufferable.

Evan didn’t know her, and she didn’t know him. She resented him, distantly, for leaving her with this new self-conscious need for invincibility just when she might have been learning how to be happy as she was.

Mostly she just hurt. Mostly she just wanted to fix it.

She would fix it. She had to.

_You’ll change the world someday._

If anyone could fix it, she could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Alana, grief isn't something anyone can 'fix.'
> 
> Next time: Evan's father flies in for the funeral. Heidi gives him his letter.

**Author's Note:**

> Next time: Alana Beck


End file.
